5 comments:

Not seen much official reaction, but one or two comrades I know are trying to dress up the No2EU vote as a "success" due the "media blackout" etc etc...ad nauseum.

I had hoped that some comrades might accept that going from 1% of the vote to 0.2% cannot be described as anything other than a deeply demoralising and cataclysmic electoral failure which should be shelved immediately, but I have yet to see any serious factual comparison between the performance at this election and the last...simply platitudes along the lines of "didn't we do well?"

Similarly, I have no doubt that the TUSC result will be presented as a major success. "The Working Class are coming" said one comrade in respect of the TUSC results the other night, which made me spit out tea with laughter over the keyboard.

I saw in Coventry TUSC coming below the disgraced BNP in many wards, and locally in Newcastle one candidate mustering a measly 10 votes...meaning that the only people he had convinced to vote for him were the ones who had signed his nomination paper...but if he voted for himself then even one of those didn't bother.

TUSC is a completely different thing, yes there were some poor results for papers candidates whose only purpose of standing was to move towards the threshold on bbc equal coverage which was missed unfortunately. But in other areas trong campaigns existed.

On 2009, I dont think its fair to say that anyone claimed no2eu was laying down a marker in and of itself but that it was significant that a trade union was supporting an electoral campaign outside of labour

My ward had a Lib Dem councillor until last Thursday. On the night, the Lib Dems came third - after Labour and the Greens. TUSC came last (after the Tories), with 3.3% of the vote.

The TUSC candidate was a local SWP notable - notable mainly for (a) being in the minority that stuck with the CC to the bitter end and (b) accidentally turning up to the book group my wife goes to, twice (the local SWP meets in the same room, but not - crucial detail - on the same night). Freedom for Tooting!

Will any of the present candidates in the RMT GS election, have the guts and principle to say it's time the union stopped wasting its members' money on this futile, reactionary exercise in nationalist posturing?